Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain
Speaker 1: Stuff Laurin bobel Bomb here. We all know that weep
Speaker 1: shouldn't eat dirt, but we do it anyway, mostly not
Speaker 1: on purpose. A dirt gets into our bodies all day,
Speaker 1: every day, whether we want it to or not. It's
Speaker 1: understandably difficult to figure out exactly how much is getting in,
Speaker 1: but that might be beside the point. After all, most
Speaker 1: of what we consume that isn't just water is technically
Speaker 1: made up of dirt that was only recently converted into
Speaker 1: plant matter or animal matter or fungus. We get our
Speaker 1: daily dirt allowance in all kinds of ways from contaminated food,
Speaker 1: dust inhalation, and not washing our hands before eating. The
Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency or EPA, has actually compiled an enormous
Speaker 1: amount of research on dirt consumption. Apparently, the dirt we
Speaker 1: consume breaks down into two basic parts, soil and dust.
Speaker 1: About forty five percent of the stuff we inhale or
Speaker 1: invertinly eat is soil and fifty five percent is dust.
Speaker 1: The EPA numbers on unintentional dirt consumption focus on children,
Speaker 1: with one study reporting that babies from six weeks to
Speaker 1: one year old generally get about sixty milligrams a day.
Speaker 1: From ages to one to twenty years that amount goes
Speaker 1: up to about one hundred milligrams a day. For reference,
Speaker 1: fifty milligrams equals one sixth of an aspirin tablet, so
Speaker 1: we're not taking in all that much dirt. If you
Speaker 1: take those daily numbers and make them annual, that would
Speaker 1: be about thirty six five hundred milligrams or one point
Speaker 1: three ounces per year. Again not a totally horrifying amount. Kids,
Speaker 1: as we know, kind of love eating dirt, especially between
Speaker 1: the ages of one and three years oh One researcher
Speaker 1: theorized that although childhood dirt eating certainly is based in
Speaker 1: curiosity about the world and the new ability to play
Speaker 1: and grab, it could also be an effort to get
Speaker 1: some vitamins and minerals. A purposeful dirt eating usually happens
Speaker 1: around a year old, which is when many babies stop breastfeeding,
Speaker 1: so maybe they're instinctually trying to regain some of that nutrition. However,
Speaker 1: some people do keep eating dirt after early childhood, a
Speaker 1: condition sometimes called geophagy or soil pika, pika being the
Speaker 1: habit of eating non food items. In most of American culture,
Speaker 1: geophagy is regarded with some concern and a little bit
Speaker 1: of fascination. Pika, in fact, is a recognized disease by
Speaker 1: the US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, with
Speaker 1: intentional dirt consumption of five hundred milligrams a day qualifying
Speaker 1: as quote pathological. But historically and in many other cultures,
Speaker 1: it's not so odd to eat specific types of dirt
Speaker 1: in specific situations. You can find bags of white kalin
Speaker 1: clay alongside other local snacks in some American convenience stores,
Speaker 1: often labeled by law as not intended for consumption. Similarly,
Speaker 1: some types of dirt are part of pregnancy culture in
Speaker 1: sub parts of Sub Saharan Africa, and generally the practice
Speaker 1: is meant to soothe upset stomachs or add extra nutrients
Speaker 1: to the diet. So while there's definitely cause for concern
Speaker 1: about contaminated food and soil, maybe we don't need to
Speaker 1: worry so much about inadvertent dirt consumption. It's only natural,
Speaker 1: and we're all made of dirt anyway, right. Today's episode
Speaker 1: is based on the article how much Dirt Do I
Speaker 1: Eat in A year? On how Stuffworks dot Com written
Speaker 1: by Alison Cooper. A green Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership with houstuffworks dot Com and is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. The four more podcasts from my heart Radio
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.